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Discovering appropriate habitat for “Earth’s bigger, older cousin”

The spotting of an “Earth like” planet by the Kepler spacecraft of NASA led to an announcement made by the officials which said that the newly found planet can have the possible conditions to support alien life. Being 1400 light years away from our home planet, Kepler-452b as called by the officials, holds alarming similarities to Earth, residing in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun.

Launched in 2009, the Kepler mission has gone on to spot and/or discover approximately 1000 planets as of yet. It is said that out of these 1000, officials have declared 12 planets as to “Earth-like”, having almost similar conditions, size, and a habitable zone ranging within their Sun.

NASA plans to set out spacecrafts out of the solar system in 2017 and 2018, launching more missions to discover other planets that support conditions for any kind of life.

As of now, Kepler-452b seems to be a ‘big catch’. Residing in a constellation termed Cygnus, the planet is estimated to be around 8/5th of Earth’s size, thus, emphasizing on ‘big’.

Even though scientists and officials have still not been sure of any kind of liquid water and a hospitable atmosphere present, it is claimed that there are high chances of both to be discovered shortly. The atmosphere, though, is being assumed to be thicker than what we have on Earth, the reason being the presence of volcanoes constantly active.

Being in it’s habitable zone for approximately 6 billion years now, the planet orbits it’s sun-like star every 385 days. Moreover, gravity level has been found to be twice as of Earth.

Sharing properties as similar to Earth, it can be assumed discovery teams will be digging a hole of human life on the planet really soon. But what can be argued here is the fact that if the planet had all the necessary conditions for any kind of life, organisms of some sort would have already been developed.

Therefore, only further discoveries and time will tell what Kepler-452b has to offer for NASA and the world.